


hollowed point

by flowermasters



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, F/M, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, No Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 00:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18435203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: “Octavia,” she says. The Red Queen’s name is funny and misshapen in her mouth, as though a few extra syllables have suddenly appeared, unbalancing the whole. “Where’s Bellamy?”





	hollowed point

**Author's Note:**

> Um. IDK man.
> 
> Warnings for: alternate universe post-5x12, major character death, grief/trauma, angst.

The three figures that stumble across no man’s land, one half-supported and half-dragged by the other two, are all much too short and thin to be Bellamy. Echo feels not the first pang of terror light in her, somewhere below the thrumming rabbit heart in her chest.

Octavia and Indra fling Gaia and themselves into the vehicle, but Echo doesn’t look back at them, her eyes roving the landscape around them. There are bodies everywhere, lumps on the ground like sacks of livestock feed, not one of them moving. Something explodes nearby, rocking the Rover with force, but still nobody on the ground moves.

“Go!” Indra barks. “There’s no one else. Go now.”

Madi sends them jerking forward, her head swiveling as she looks toward Echo, confused.

“Wait!” Emori shouts, having ducked down from her place at the top hatch. “We can’t leave Bellamy.”

“Get in!” Indra roars. “We must go!”

Murphy, having flung himself back into the Rover just before the blast, slams the back doors as they careen forward. Echo turns fully in her seat to face the rear as the vehicle presses on, moving her body despite her instincts as they scream for her to keep her eyes forward, on the action, looking for Bellamy.

“Octavia,” she says. The Red Queen’s name is funny and misshapen in her mouth, as though a few extra syllables have suddenly appeared, unbalancing the whole. “Where’s Bellamy?”

Octavia looks at her, her brown eyes—like her brother’s, or like her brother’s had looked, many years ago—hard as glossy stone. There are clean tracks in the grime on her cheeks; the paint around her eyes is badly smudged. Echo expects any one of the dozens of different ways Octavia could say it. _He’s dead. They killed him. Em gonplei ste odon. May we meet again._

Instead, she says, her voice almost toneless, “He told me to tell his family that he’s sorry. And that he loves you.”

A strangeness comes over her. The words sink into her, spreading like poison in the vein. She feels a way that she hasn’t felt since the Mountain: weak, lightheaded, feverish and ill. She is already so tired, so hungry. Over the sudden roar in her ears she hears Emori’s gasp, abruptly silenced; Murphy’s exclamation of, “No. No fucking way.”

“Echo,” Emori says, her voice distant. Then, “She’s going to pass out.”

 _No_ , Echo thinks. There are questions that need to be asked. _Are you sure. Did you see him take his last breath. Why didn’t you save him. Why didn't I save him. What will we do without him. What will I do without him._

“Did he suffer?” she asks, forcing her eyes to focus on Octavia even as spots appear in her vision.

Octavia isn’t looking at her anymore. Instead she gazes straight ahead at nothing at all, her posture unusually slumped. Though she must be the youngest among them save for Madi, she looks older suddenly, if not in body then in spirit. Older than Bellamy, older than the Earth.

“Yeah,” she says, still gazing through the years at something Echo can’t see. “But it’s over now.”

Lightheadedness weakens her, steals any protest she might have managed. She has to close her eyes. Bellamy would tell her to breathe. _Hey. It’s alright. Just breathe._ The Rover keeps moving. Somehow, she stays awake, though she is aware only of the dips and rises of the terrain as they leave Bellamy behind.

* * *

Someone—Emori and Murphy, in all likelihood—tells Monty and Harper, or maybe they realize as soon as the Rover arrives with survivors from the gorge and without Bellamy. She does not see them, although there aren’t nearly enough people left of Wonkru for them to be so thoroughly lost in the crowd. At any rate, they spare Echo of their initial grieving, or perhaps they simply cannot catch up to her as she shadows Madi about the camp.

“I’m sorry about Bellamy,” Madi says, stopping abruptly to look up at her. Echo has never felt taller while in the presence of a leader. “I really am. Clarke told such great stories about him.”

Echo nods. Again, the words sink in slowly, as if drifting to the bottom of a deep pool within her. She should feel something, something other than a cool, pulsing numbness. Bellamy would tell her that she’s in shock. Bellamy would tell her to rest, to find their people. He always spoke of _processing_ things, though Echo was never completely sure she understood what he meant by that.

Madi swallows hard. “Clarke also told me about you. What a great warrior and strategist you are. I need you, Echo, if we want to win this fight for him.”

Though the child’s voice shakes a little, her eyes are clear and bright, like the eyes of every Commander before her. “My bow is yours,” Echo says, inclining her head. Obedience and discipline feel safe and familiar, an old fur shrugged on in the first days of winter. “ _Heda_.”

Madi nods, and they walk on.

* * *

Time begins to pass in spurts. She follows Madi, the faces of others blurring as she passes, speaking only to give advice, to relay orders. She knows she isn’t acting like herself—isn’t as sharp as she should be, as awake, as aware. She doesn’t know if anyone else grieves for Bellamy, if any of Wonkru—aside from Miller, perhaps, Bellamy’s old lieutenant, though his loyalties have long since shifted—have it in them to care at the moment.

Harper finds her before they leave for the Valley, Monty following behind, his face blotchy and his eyes swollen. Harper’s lips are trembling.

“Echo, please,” she says, reaching out, grabbing Echo’s forearms gently. “Let’s talk for a minute. We need to talk. All of us.”

Echo forces herself to meet Harper’s gaze. There is nothing to say now, nothing that can make it make sense, nothing that can save him or the rest of them. There is only the impending march. “We will,” Echo says. “After this is over.”

“There might not be an after,” Monty says, his voice raw. Echo can’t look at him.

“Please,” she says. “Find Murphy and Emori for me. We must go.”

Harper bites her lower lip, her eyes wet with fresh moisture, then nods. She lets go, then pulls Monty on.

* * *

Her arrows meet their targets. The gorge is won. She isn’t sure how; she doesn’t think she’ll be able to describe the experience later. Maybe she won’t even be able to remember it. She thinks of waking on the Ring to the sound of the air vent over the bed rattling, thinks of blinking away the blurry impression of horrors long past, caging and bloodletting, as they return once more to the realm of nightmare. _Hey. It’s alright, just breathe._ Maybe she will wake up and this will have all been an awful, horrible dream.

There’s no time for a slaughter in the Valley. Raven’s voice emits from speakers around the village, urging everyone onto the ship. Echo wakes again in the cold, dimly-lit interior of the transport ship, a sudden, disorienting sense of reality returning as she is surrounded by hundreds of frightened, yelling people, Wonkru and Eligius alike. She doesn’t know where Monty, Harper, Murphy, and Emori are. She almost joins in on the cries of fear, the calling of names; she forgets that if she called for Bellamy, he would not come.

She finds Raven, who tells her that the others are still outside, racing against time; before Echo can move her leaden feet, coerce her body to run, Raven says, her voice sharp, “Where’s Bellamy?”

“The gorge,” Echo says, looking into Raven’s eyes, although she longs to avert her gaze to the wall of blinking and alarming computer consoles behind her. “He didn't make it out.”

Raven recoils as if slapped, her brown eyes widening, disbelief and shock and horror crossing her expression all in less than a second; before she can speak, before she can cry, Clarke’s voice comes over the line, screaming that everyone is in and to go, go now.

For the third time in Echo’s life, and for the second time in the past day, the ground falls out from beneath her feet.

* * *

There is much to discuss, apparently, after the third end of the world. Echo cannot find it in her to care, although something in her—the oldest part of her, the Azgedan part—begs her to engage because this is important, this is the future of her people. She listens as best she can, but she doesn’t hear.

No one asks her to speak. Even as she avoids others she is aware that most of them are already avoiding her; while Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori, and Raven flank her as constantly as they can, others—Miller, Jackson, even Shaw—don’t meet her eyes. She wonders idly, almost disinterestedly curious, if she has the look of a widow about her. Tired and pale like one, maybe, but she hasn’t yet wept like one.

Clarke won’t look at her either. Her eyes, Echo notes, are reddened, but this is the sole indication that she has been crying. Echo should kill her. Echo should kill Clarke first and then Octavia; it would be the Azgedan way of settling Bellamy’s spirit, even if they all mourn for him. But she can’t even muster the energy to be angry, let alone to raise a sword. She hasn’t even seen Octavia since the Valley, and wouldn’t know what to do if she sought her out. Octavia, who was with her brother as he died; Octavia, who hopefully gave him some small amount of peace.

Earth is visible outside the viewport at the front of the bridge. The surface is all the same dull, dirty orange now, not even the tiniest patch of green visible to the eye. Looking at it as someone speaks, as the words _cryo_ and _ten years_ and _regeneration_ slip by her, it occurs to Echo that they’ve really and truly left him there.

His body has surely been destroyed now, but his spirit—his spirit. It will be at least ten years before she can put him to rest, if there is any small part of him left. She has left him behind.

The floor beneath her feet seems to tilt; her blood begins to rush in her ears again, her heartbeat too loud and too slow. Someone says her name as she moves for the exit. She’s not sure if she has managed to leave at a normal pace or if she is full-out running, fleeing. They will not see her collapse. She will not allow it.

The hallways nearest the bridge are filled with people milling about, but the Eligius ship is huge, with far more places to run than on the Ring. Echo pushes blindly forward until she finds an empty corridor lined with closed doors. Only then, over the gently thrumming white noise created by the ship, does she hear footsteps behind her.

“Echo,” someone says. Harper?

She turns. It is Harper, with Monty behind her and Emori close behind, having likely slowed to let Murphy and Raven keep up. Echo just stands there for a moment as they draw closer, and then suddenly Harper is embracing her, squeezing her tight. Echo hugs her back for stability more than anything, and yet still everything is tilting, and they sink slowly to the floor together.

She hears Monty’s exclamation of surprise, and someone else asking a question, but Harper says nothing, just pulls Echo’s face into the crook of her neck. They kneel on the floor together, rocking slowly back and forth. She doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t understand anything anymore.

Gradually Echo realizes that it’s her that’s doing the rocking. Someone is moaning, low and anguished; that’s her, too. Someone kneels closely beside Harper—Monty. Others flank Echo—Emori and Murphy; she hears Murphy’s pained grunt as he drops to the floor. There’s someone behind her, stroking her hair; that must be Raven. Only one of them missing now.

She’s not sure how long they stay like that, only that she cries out, a continuous low wail, until her voice fails her. The others are crying, too—some openly, like Monty and Raven, and others only in angry sniffles, like Murphy. Echo wishes she could speak, wishes that Bellamy were here to tell them what to do, how to go about this now. For all the jokes the others made on the Ring about his motivational speeches and his lectures, he was good at that.

 _Hey. It’s alright. Just breathe._  

They stay like that, the six of them, until footsteps approach, the heavy thud of boots. Someone speaks, quiet and apologetic; Echo peeks through Harper’s hair with tired, swollen eyes and makes out the figure of Shaw. Raven responds. The words are lost.

Shaw leaves a beat later, and once his footsteps have receded, Raven says, “Come on. All of you, up.”

“Raven,” someone says, a quiet protest. Monty?

“Come on,” she repeats, her voice gravelly and tired. “It’s what—well. You know.”

It’s what he would want. Even what he’d demand.

Echo surprises them all, she thinks, by being the first to move. She disentangles herself from Harper, standing on weak legs and managing to maintain her balance until Emori, pale and red-eyed, stands too and offers her a hand. Echo reaches out a hand to help Murphy up, and he doesn’t pull away when she grabs his elbow as they walk. Where they’re walking, she’s not sure, but Raven leads the way.

They return to the area of the ship dedicated to cryo. They must be among the last to climb in to the tubes; only a few stragglers remain. Echo glimpses Octavia settling herself into one, her back to them and her shoulders stooped, but they pass up that corridor of pods in favor of the next, finding several unoccupied ones in the same area. Shaw must’ve saved the pods for them, judging by the fact that he’s waiting around, looking nervous.

They murmur good nights to one another as they’ve done thousands of times before, but not as though they’re separating at the dinner table after an evening card game on the Ring. Monty and Harper are dawdling, maybe hoping for a private goodbye; the others, Echo with them, don’t seem keen to prolong the inevitable. Echo cannot muster the energy to feel afraid of the tube; at any rate, she knows what to tell herself to push the fear away.

The cryo tube pulls her in smoothly. Someone—Harper—says “see you soon” before the tube seals itself with a hiss. Echo closes her eyes and breathes.

When she wakes, he won’t be there, but he is there in her dreams.


End file.
